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Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, the current top scorer in Spain’s La Liga, is a very fancy man. This much we know. But what I didn’t know till just a little while ago was how fancy he was. Nike has designed a new boot, the CR Mercurial Vapor SuperFly II (quite the mouthful, yes) specifically for him. The last time Nike did that for a player was when Ronaldinho was good. (Incidentally, Ronaldinho was just called up to the Brazil squad.) He’ll debut the boots in the Madrid derby (against Atlético, of course) on November 7.

The boots… well, they’re certainly unique-looking. A recent poll on as.com, one of the two big Madrid-based sports newspapers, shows that only 35 percent of respondents were keen on the pattern.

The leopard skin is a bold choice, yes, but the print doesn’t necessarily concern us here. We’re not the fashion police.

No, what does concern us is the use of something called Nike Sense adaptive traction system, a technology that dynamically expands and retracts the studs on the bottom of the boot. So, depending on whether Cristiano is sprinting at full speed down the touchline, or if he’s waiting in mid-field for a pass, you know, the studs will react in kind. Different scenarios requires different tractions.

The boot also uses Nike’s Flywire, a carbon chassis of sorts that, among other things, keeps the foot closer to the ground as Cristiano is running about.

And here’s a video that describes, in greater detail, exactly what’s going on with the boots.